Sleeping pills and Amazon

This is my life now. My literal, true, happened last night, honest to god story of my life.

Last night I was tired but couldn't sleep, business as usual. Monday morning meetings with no sleep are, frankly, worse than waking with a hangover to a 5 year old learning the violin, so I popped a sleeping tablet, hoping to present the world with a less violin-smashy version of myself in the morning.

My bedtime routine includes removing various creatures my cats have brought in during the day and checking under the covers for any cockroaches that may have escaped their claws (one night I failed to do this, which resulted in my extremely abrupt ejection from the bed, doing the "ITS STILL ON ME" dance in the nude in the middle of the night - zolpidem notwithstanding. I assure you, a 10cm cockroach does NOT make for a pleasant bed-mate). Once all was clear I settled in, launched the kindle and awaited the fluffy effects of the pills.

I awoke this morning feeling refreshed and well rested, with no obvious signs of co-sleeping with small creatures, ready for a day of meetings with irate people about the water crisis. As usual, I took the first few minutes of my day to clear my phone of all the marketing emails and SMS' I get overnight, and checked my calendar to make sure I haven't forgotten an appointment with the apocalypse or something. This morning however, I had an entire bevy of SMS notifications that made no sense, and which I had no recollection of generating. I spent some time re-creating a timeline and the following is what I have pieced together from notifications, my banking app and my Amazon account.

It would appear that I finished my book shortly after lying down to read. Not feeling ready to sleep just yet, I browsed online on my kindle to find another book and made a purchase. This purchase was declined, due to insufficient funds on the card registered on my Amazon account. I appear to have been in denial, for I then attempted to purchase a further 23 books, all of which were declined.  I then (I assume) logged into my Amazon account and tried to change the card assigned to Kindle purchases. However, when one changes a credit card, Amazon will prompt you to verify security, usually by asking you to complete a phone number. The last phone number on my account is from my stay in India, and I have about as much memory of it as I do of  Pi. At some point I must have locked myself out of my account as I appear to have tried to reset my password. I know I was persistent though, as I had 9 reset password emails in my inbox.

In what I can only assume was an almost insensate drooling state of book-reading desperation, I must have finally twigged that perhaps just checking the card might be a good idea. I logged into my banking app and transferred R100 to the card in question though it’s possible I meant to transfer R1000. The book (God knows which one by now), was R121 and the payment was once again declined. At this stage I must have given up on reason completely, and I accepted one of those "INCREASE YOUR CREDIT LIMIT TO SOMETHING OUTRAGEOUS NOW" offers. I awoke this morning to a brand new credit limit of R125,000.00. It would also appear that every one of the book purchases went through, all 23 of them. That was one seriously expensive sleeping pill.

The Moth-apocalypse

What follows is in no way embellished. I sorely wish it was.

Last night, I was in bed. I've recently gained a little so my clothes aren't as comfortable as they could be, so I had decided to sleep in my usual summer gear - knickers only. This may seem like T.M.I. but it becomes important later. Anyway, I'd just finished an amazing book, which naturally I had to finish before I could possibly sleep, and at 1 AM I was finally ready to pass out. I was pretty exhausted, and had pretty much been using matchsticks to keep my eyes open while I finished the book, so it was with a sigh of relief that I switched off the light and settled back into the fluffy sleepiness.

Naturally, this is when I heard my cat, Jinx, growling and the distinct sound of some sort of winged creature frantically fluttering. Part of me was thinking "it's going to die soon, its probably beyond help, I'll just let it go", and the rest of me was thinking "WHAT IF IT GETS FREE AND FLIES INTO MY FACE WHILE I AM SLEEPING?!?"

So I switched on the light, preparing myself for the worst. I mean, those wing beats did not sound petite. I looked around the room, and could see nothing. No cat, no winged creature, nothing; but I could hear it. I cautiously got out of bed, peeked around the wall into the toilet area and there sat my cat, one paw resting lightly on one wing of the most enormous moth I have ever seen. Dinner plate seized, fly into your face and scream sized.

Jinx was sitting quietly watching the moth struggle under her foot. She turned to look at me with an expression that clearly said "nothing to see here, move along human".

Task one was to disconnect cat from moth. She knew what was coming and started growling at me, low pitched and frankly quite terrifying, coming as it did from the cute furry face that usually nuzzles up to me at night. I steeled myself and grabbed her, heading at speed for the bedroom door while she struggled as if I was heading for a deep-fryer. I literally threw her through the door and barely got it closed before the hissing growling fury that was Jinx darted back through. She nearly lost her head in the door slam. I was immediately treated to frantic scrabbling from the other side, while I leaned against the door and breathed heavily in an almost picture perfect horror-movie type "escape from the monster" scene of relief. Until I realized that I was now stuck in the bedroom with the fucking moth man prophesies and no way to capture it, and all possible capturing vessels were on the other side of the door. With Jinx.

At this point, I still had not got round to putting any clothing on. Part of me was thinking about the potential horror of trying to capture an enormous moth and the risk of it getting near my vulnerable exposed chest. However, the rest was thinking that it wasn't like I was going to lose a nipple or something, so I just steeled myself and darted back out of the bedroom door, slammed it behind me, and went searching for a family-of-30-sized tupperware container with which to catch the moth-apocalypse. I finally found something suitable, made it back into the bedroom and with relative ease was able to capture it, cover the container with a piece of cardboard and triumphantly hold the trapped bastard aloft.

It was then I realized that since I was largely naked, I could hardly pop out the front door and toss the mutant beast over the fence. I settled for through the bathroom window. As I opened the bedroom door (with an elbow, since both hands were busy holding the fluttering beast) Jinx dashed back into the bedroom and frantically searched for her prey. I am not ashamed to say I felt some distinct pleasure at her consternation over its sudden disappearance. I may have even stuck out my tongue.

Heading into the bathroom, I stepped into the bath, reached both hands through the window and tossed the moth-monster out. I breathed a sigh of relief and reached for the window to close it, with which the bloody fucking stupid asshole of a mutant beast from fluttery hell FLEW BACK THROUGH THE WINDOW!

I swore loudly to myself and prepared to try catch the bloody thing again, at which point I felt my cat join me in the bath and heard her yowl at the giant winged freak. What followed can only be described as naked human versus furry clawed yowling insanity as I dashed back and forth across the bathroom, naked breasts swinging, bum jiggling, and arms flying as I tried to beat the tiny hunting machine at my feet to the capture of the moth monstrosity. It was with a barely suppressed shout of triumph that I beat her to the post, captured the prize and with absolutely no grace whatsoever threw the whole bloody lot, moth, tupperware and cardboard through the window and slammed it shut.

I collapsed onto the closed toilet seat and took a shuddering breath, and just hung my head. When my heart rate had returned from "about to jump off a cliff to certain death" to something more like "ran up a mountain because a hot shirtless man was waiting for me"  I wobbled back to bed. Naturally, Jinx curled up on my shoulder, gave a satisfied purr, and went to sleep.

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For visual reference of size, please see HERE

(Ok, so it was probably more like this, but it was the middle of the night and I was tired and NAKED)